Does Turkey need Designers? 2004 - Don’t expect a straight answer. Maybe it is not even a meaningful question to ask. Nevertheless it occupies a large portion of my mind and I’m afraid it makes me question some of the seemingly universal myths of design. I’ll try to share some thoughts with you, hoping that their articulation helps their transformation into deeper or more useful ones. In ‘The Man Without Qualities’ Robert Musil writes: “In every profession followed not for money but for love there comes a moment when the advancing years seem to lead to a void.” To me the advancing years don’t seem to lead to a void because I think I am already in that void. More or less two years ago I’ve ended up there. Unfortunately I neither remember how it happened, nor I know why it happened. But it was quite a sudden fall, which left me feeling joyless and useless. I’ve started therefore to perceive both my professional existence and my life meaningless. Initially I thought that I’ve read too much Camus and Sartre when I was growing up and that I should be able to continue living without trying to give meaning to things. It should be possible to breathe without considering its relavance... as simple as that. But I failed. Then I started to think about the ‘and’ in ‘love and faith’. Maybe both concepts needed each other to exist in a certain realm. There was no doubt about my love to design but did I have faith in it? The answer was no. Did I ever have had faith in it? The answer was yes. So what went wrong? I learned how to read by trying to decipher the political writings around the sidewalks of Istanbul. I decided to be a graphic designer when I was 16. By that time I was sure that I would never have anything to say because I would be never intellectual enough to have a ‘Weltanschaung’ which I thought was necessary to take a strong stand.  But I saw many people out there who might like to use a mediator. I didn’t have the words but I knew I could shape them. As Lupton and Miller say ‘typography is the interface of writing’. In that sense I wanted to be an interface designer. Definetely not a problem solver. Here I must add I didn’t and still don’t perceive design as a problem solving process. The concept of problem solving—because of the context it is borrowed from—implies that design is a purely rational practice which is not necessarilly true. Besides I consider problems as important as solutions and depending on the context, producing problems may be far more constructive then offering solutions which eventually tend to turn into prescriptions. A mediator regarding what is to be mediated as a problem only reacts to it whereas it is quite possible to act with it. What I’m trying to say is I prefer to perceive my profession as a specialized form of authorship. We read and rewrite: A process of interpretation, expression of which—since I’m a print designer—in my case is visual. So as a ‘would be mediator’ I started to look for words to interpret. I never had any doubt about my medium. I liked type and I liked it static and smelly. I also liked paper because—like the human skin—it could carry the patina of time. My first serious work was a series of posters I’ve designed as a student during the first huge hunger-strike in jails. On each day of the strike I added a poster to the series hanging on the wall of the school corridor. Day by day the number of posters were growing and day by day they were turning from symbols of hope into symbols of death. It was then, when I understood what Camus meant when he wrote that there is hope where there is no hope. I have no idea whether this work had any kind of impact but it surely motivated me. Yes, I was going to be a designer and transform our miserable lives. But the first place I worked professionally turned out to be owned by extreme nationalists and I found myself doing mechanicals of right-wing propoganda material. The second time I applied at an ad agency which was designing the election campaign for the social democratic party. I couldn’t handle the populism of the copywriters. After couple of other ad agencies and a master’s thesis inbetween I’ve realized that I’m not fit for branding. Turning use value into status value didn’t seem noble enough. Obviously I wasn’t going to save the world by helping Frigidaire to sell more refrigerators. Only a designer of Piet Zwart’s caliber could change the world by designing for a cable factory but not me. I needed words. I mean serious and progressive content. I should be working for artists and NGO’s. The editor of the first book I’ve designed had only the intentions to prove that the painter whose life he was portraying was not an alcoholic but a proper man. Artists I worked for later on turned out to be tired individuals who entirely were interested in selling more paintings which all looked the same. The first NGO I worked for was too busy with organizing parties to collect money. The second one wanted to urge Turkish women to vote but the members kept fighting among each other and ended up doing nothing. After numerous NGO’s I decided not to work for any of them. However then came the so called August the 17th Eartquake. In the first 72 hours every single person in Istanbul was trying to do something to help people affected by it. The telephone lines weren’t working and everything was a mess. I found myself at a civil initiative meeting again. Thousands of people were dead, thousands of them still under the rubble, thousands of them were hurt and homeless. And under these circumstances I was asked to design a logo for the new earthquake initiative which was about to be found. As if one could construct an identity with one single logo. If there is nothing to sign why the need for a signature? This is why kids don’t have any. Are we there to design empty signifiers? Here in a parenthesis it must be added that the Government is also not a good client. So far ideologically I never wished to work for a govermental project but I would love to have a government who would consider of hiring specialized designers at least when it comes to text-books used at state schools. It seems only govermental projects which are tourism related deserve advertising professionals and designers in Turkey. I guess because their target audience is western. We package Turkey only for export purposes. But as locals we live in the package. Our government is more concerned about how the package looks from outside but doesn’t much care about its inside: Similar to corporations who regard corporate identity as a business suit carried at a press conference. No awareness of the importance of clean underwear. So I guess I was unlucky or I was on a wrong path to start with. But after almost 18 years of professional experience I can proudly say that I’ve met only a handful of people who has something worthy to say in this country. Therefore my teen-age dream of shaping messages which could shape the world unfortunately didn’t come true. But on the way I’ve started to view my ambition with skepticism. The following is a quote taken from the theme of ‘Power of Design - AIGA National Design Conference’: “Designers are incredibly powerful. We have a hand in creating the communications, experiences and artifacts that shape our world and growing influence on decisions affecting the quality of life for millions of people. We make the mundane easier; we can delight the spirit; we can make things function better; we can help others understand the implications of choice by the way we see problems; and we can help all people to communicate among themselves better. These contributions will always be important; today, in a world struggling against itself and its environment, they are absolutely critical.” Years ago I could be fascinated reading these lines. But now I do doubt this power talk. Why do we have to prove our power to legitimize our professional existence? A rhetoric which puts power into its center reproduces the rhetoric of status quo. It is one thing to be aware of our social responsibilities and another thing to sell it to others with a macho discourse. Or isn’t it just a rhetoric? Are we all after power? Assuming that all kinds of energy strong enough to trigger a social change is powerful by nature, maybe it is not that bad after all. So maybe yes, we should be after power. But yet again doesn’t power imply a hegemonic relationship of some sort? Let’s find or invent new concepts to explain our role on the planet. Isn’t there a way of feeling happy or content without feeling important? At least I think I have to find a way. Here in Turkey I have to resist power even if it’s my own. Because here in Turkey one obeys the powerful. Because obedience doesn’t allow people to be individuals. Westernization is a term which is widely used in Turkey as a synonym for modernization. Maybe it’s not such a wrong usage, since modernity happens to be a western invention. On the other hand it presupposes that there are no other possible ways of being modern but only the western way. It has started with the discourse of the new Republic and we live with it. We want to be like the Westerners. We want to be them. This is a mentality or phenomenon that I’m truly not well equipped to explain. Though it surfaces frequently in Turkish life. In fact we also want to be like each other. Very weird. Maybe it is the remains of a pre-modern/traditional society. We can’t deal with differences. We either exclude and marginalize the different as the Other or we do our best to render it like the rest.   The richest people in this country live in gated communities which consist of hundreds of identical houses. Many of them hire the same interior designer. They all have the same brand of home theater in their living-rooms. Everybody wants to belong to the same club. According to a Lewis research the young people in Europe like to customize their jeans. In Turkey, on the other hand, the huge jeans brand Mavi had the biggest commercial success by introducing menus like in McDonald’s. You go in; order a menu; get the prepackaged jeans, t-shirt and the shoes. There were only 4 different menus for each sex and at the end of the summer the teenagers were walking in uniforms. This situation has a negative impact on design. One, as a designer, is confronted with clients who demand design products which are exactly like the others. This is such a paradox. Isn’t design meant to be about differentation? Here to compete you must resemble. A good architectural firm for whom I work for, once presented a quite progressive idea to a client. The client didn’t buy it. The architects—after weeks of research—found a very similar approach in a Zaha Hadid project and they showed the client the proof that it has been done before. The idea was accepted. How can a designer survive an attitude like this? In such a cultural environment it’s almost impossible to create work which stands apart; or to experiment; or to search for new ways of communication. Designing is a personal process. I’ve never agreed with the modernist view of design’s need to be objective and neutral. We are here to tell the stories which are yet untold. Cassandre was wrong I’m not a telegraph operator. Without a subjective voice I’m useless. If he were right then I’m not a designer. But hey, Turkey does not need designers anyway. Maybe design as a modern profession is just too modern for Turkey. But on the other hand isn’t design a social and cultural practice? Don’t I contribute to the construction of the society here? So maybe Turkey does need design for her own modernization process. Or maybe not... Hopefully sooner or later I will get out of the void. Because recently I’ve realized designing is like the crashing in Cronenberg’s film: Meaningful/powerful/beautiful or not it makes one feel alive.